Читать книгу Viking's Dawn - Henry Treece - Страница 4

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The fjord was full of the noise of busy men. The very air seemed to vibrate as in a great open-air smithy. The clanging of anvil blows, the hammering of planks, the buzzing of long two-handed saws echoed and re-echoed across the inclosed blue water. And all these sounds seemed to glance like flat stones over the surface of the sea valley, to lose themselves up the farther rocky slopes and then in the great dim forests that crowned the rim of the inlet and stretched far away into the mountains, into the unknown frightening spaces of trolls and witches.

The little thatch and wooden settlement that straggled along the shore of the fjord throbbed with activity. Black-faced men in leather aprons worked the great oxskin bellows to fan the flames of many outdoor furnaces; others beat out long iron nails on anvils that were gripped between their padded knees; yet others walked backwards down long ropewalks, twisting the harsh fibers in their raw hands. The women worked busily stitching, with thick waxed thread, or at the shuttles of their looms, which were set up outside the hovel doors so as to make the most of the new and welcome spring light. Children scurried back and forth, fetching and carrying for their sweating elders, sometimes a hammer, or a pail of ice-cold water to temper the iron, sometimes a roughly cut hunk of barley bread or a pannikin of corn wine.

All worked in that place, even the very old and the crippled. The ship they were building was not the toy of one man; it was the property of them all. And it was almost finished. Another day at the most would see it ready for the painters. Even the oldest ones, plaiting thongs, horny-handed in the shadow, saw new dreams of gold taking shape before their dim eyes. “Share and share alike,” thought they. “To each his portion, and may she speed well and return laden before I make my greetings to Odin.” This long ship had been built by the whole village. Those who were skilled in shipbuilding had worked day by day, with an adze on the planks or walking backwards along the ropewalks. Those who had no such skill, or were too old to wield an ax or to ply a needle, had contributed in other ways, either by supplying food and drink to their more active neighbors, or by paying good money to shipwrights to come from afar.... And all this, so that the ship should bring back profit to the village. These men did not think of glory, or even of adventure. They were practical men—as most northerners are—who wanted a good return for their labor or money. And the ship which they were creating would bring back those good returns, they hoped. This village had heard of the rich court of the Franks. They had seen the fine silks and the painted pictures that had come from Byzantium. And such English noblemen as had crossed the northern seas to them had worn gold about their necks and arms.... The rest of the world must be very rich, they thought.

And so they built this long ship, to relieve the rest of the world of some of its surplus riches. The village on the fjord could do with a little gold, and some silks. It would not even object to a few pictures—provided, of course, that the artist had used real gold leaf in painting them!

Among all these fjord-folk, the long ship lay on her runway like a royal thing, a proud princess whose slaves attended to her every want. A long ship that would brave the harsh buffeting of the open seas, or outtrick the subtlest of rivers. A handsome shell in which a warrior king would feel proud to drift out on an ebb tide, the death flames licking round him as he lay among his furs and his weapons and his hounds, on that last long journey to Odin’s feast hall.

Of clean and fresh-smelling oak, the long ship was almost eighty feet long, from stem to stern, and sixteen feet broad at her middle. Standing over seven feet high from keel bottom to gunwales, she dwarfed the many busy men who toiled about her on the stocks, even though as yet her forty-foot mast had not been stepped into its socket in the keel. They smiled at each other, satisfied with their work. If the good weather held, they would step the mast tomorrow, so that it would fall backwards quickly and easily when the forestay was eased off. And tomorrow, by the help of all the gods in the groves, they would fit the other ropes, the stays to prow and stern, those that braced the long yardarm, those that ran on pulleys to raise and lower the sail....

The foreman of the shipwrights wiped a rough and work-soiled hand over his red face. He turned to the apprentice lad who caulked the smart clinker-built planking of the sides.

“Never was maiden more comely,” he said. “Trust a horse before a hound, a hound before a lass—and a long ship before them all!” The boy grinned back at him. “Maybe you are right, Master Björn,” he said. “But women can be useful at times! My aunt and my sisters have woven the sail for her, and a fine thing it is—all red and blue and green, in great stripes the thickness of a pine trunk.”

“Ay, and your mother has embroidered the pennant, hasn’t she, lad?” said Björn, smiling.

The boy looked down, as though he knew not what to say. “Well, Master,” he ventured at last, “she has edged it and put on its long golden fringe, but no one has told her what emblem to work on the white silk. It rests as unmarked as the snows on the Bear Mountain. We know not what name she shall carry.”

He glanced at Björn craftily, as though expecting his master to give him the answer. But Björn only whistled and bent to examine a row of rivets and their great, square washers that held the long oak planks fast together.

“Ay, ay,” he said, in a whisper, “who knows what she will be named!”

The boy was suddenly conscious of a hush about him. He stopped working and bent toward Björn. “Here is the one, Master, who will know, if anyone does.”

Björn turned and then pulled his forelock, and, like all the other workmen, stood silent and waiting. And among the huts by the blue water a name was whispered that fetched the young maids to the doorways, and put a smile on the faces of the older women.

“Thorkell Fairhair! Thorkell Fairhair!”

In the shadow of one hut an old man sat, patiently mending a fish net. His hands were gnarled and twisted with rheumatism, but he forced them on and on, to tie the knots in the tarry twine. A long sword cut had once plowed the length of his cheek and had taken away the teeth on one side of his jaw. He heard the name, this old warrior, and a shiver seemed to pass over his face like a little cloud before the sun. His battle-scarred face wrinkled along its war cuts in a strange, ironic smile.

“Ay, Thorkell Fairhair, the maids call him, knowing but his beauty! Thorkell Skullsplitter is his name in other parts.”

He shrugged and went on mending the net, his head shaking a little with a palsy brought on by the bitter wind that blew along the fjord for the greater part of the year.

The young man, Thorkell, stood among the silent folk. He was but of medium height, and slimly made. As yet he wore no mustaches or beard, and his blue eyes looked out of his smooth face as mildly as a girl’s. Only there was something in the thin twist of his lips that took away from the gentleness. Something in the lean twitching of his jaws that spoke of tireless, nervous energy. Something in the quick catlike tread that told its own tale of sudden action. Those who noted only the long corn-golden hair that hung unplaited down his back, down the gilded mail shirt, would have been deceived, thought Björn.

Those who noted only the many glittering rings that circled his long slim fingers, the thick arm bands that clasped his arms, the gold gorget at his throat, would have been deceived, thought the apprentice lad, with a secret grin. This was no maid; this was Thorkell, call him by whatever name you cared or dared, but Thorkell.

And when Thorkell came to the village, men were silent until he gave the word to speak. Even the old warriors, men who had killed bears in the high summer on the mountain tops. Some said he was the son of an outlawed king; some said he was a king himself, of another land beyond ultima Thule; some, the oldest ones who had lost their grip on the life of ordinary men, whispered that Odin had sent him down among the Northmen to see what they were up to and to report back when he had seen. But when one too daring, young warrior in his cups had called him “Thorkell Odinson” to his face, he had kicked the fool’s feet from under him and had come near to throttling him with those same slim, ring-laden fingers. ... So no one really knew what to think. And now Thorkell Whoever-he-was stood looking at the long ship, looking and smiling faintly out of those cold blue eyes that seemed to see beyond the hull, beyond the ice-blue fjord, beyond the farther hills and forests, and on and on, beyond the very rim of the world herself....

Behind him stood another one. His sacking cloak hung as limply as the rough red hair that he had plaited loosely and had braided with leather shoelaces; a tall thin man, with the nose of a hawk and the quick eyes of a ferret. A man who was constantly scratching his side or poking a bony finger into his great red ears. This was a different sort of man. He wore no mail shirt, but a long leather jerkin, plated here and there with strips of iron to act as armor of a sort. About his thin waist he wore a rusting chain—not a gilt-studded belt like Thorkell’s. But from that chain hung something more terrifying than the red-sheathed long sword that Thorkell bore; a mace of bog oak into which a score of sharp flints had been sunk, each one jutting forth horribly, its sharpest point outward. This was a weapon to fear in all truth. The sword is deadly, but its work is done in a minute. Such a thing as this man wore might bring the torments of the damned upon a man before Odin smiled down on him and gave him some relief.

The villagers saw the mace, saw the strange, sad, sheeplike face of the man as he scratched his thin hair or shuffled his high shoulders as though the nibbling ants were at him. “Wolf Waterhater,” they said. “Wolf who has never washed in his life and vows to stay like that until his time comes!”

And even the children giggled and pushed closer to see this Wolf, who had sailed on every sea man knew, yet hated the very thought of water touching his tender skin!

Then the long silence was broken. Thorkell turned his head toward the tall man. “Is she fair?” he asked, laconically.

Wolf stepped forward so pompously that even the apprentice lad smiled. He went onward, his pale eyebrows raising and lowering themselves, and seemed to look at the long ship as though he had never seen one before. He stopped and poked his red finger into one of the sixteen oarports that ran along each side of the ship in the third strake from the top. They were not round holes, but long narrow ones. Wolf ran his finger along them for a while, then turned and said, “Cut off the shipmaster’s thumbs; he is too lazy to carve a circle.”

There was a stir among the folk. Björn was a true Norseman and did not wait for anyone to ask where he was. He stepped down from his plank and nodded to Thorkell. Then he waited for the other to speak. Thorkell said, “Shall we cut them off with your own knife or with mine?” He drew a long thin blade from his girdle. The haft was set with coral, noted Björn. The village folk drew in their breath. The children were secretly cuffed into silence. The old man mending the net shrugged his shoulders and licked his forefinger to twist another knot, as though he had heard it all before and thought it little worth the noting.

Björn said, “Yours, Thorkell. Mine is too tarry from the ropes.” He held out his hand for Thorkell’s knife. It was a pretty one and Björn was curious to see how it was made. Thorkell handed it to him and the shipmaster examined it carefully and then returned it with a smile. “Not much good against a wolf, I should say,” he said.

Thorkell said, “You are wrong, Björn. If you were to keep your thumbs, I would bet you a horse against a yard of rope that this knife is just the thing to probe beneath a spring bear’s fat.”

He went toward Björn to illustrate what he was saying. “Look, the blade is thin and keen. You just slip it under his arm as he grasps, and you roll sideways, like this, and then he falls, but you must be ready to jump back for he weighs heavier than a chariot! He would crunch your leg like a winter stick!”

As he said this he made the movements of the hunter, while Björn pretended to be the bear waked from his hibernation. The folk stood stock-still, sucking in their breath with expectation, for they were simple northern folk who readily gave themselves to a tale.

Thorkell thrust with his thin knife, and the strong-armed Björn watched and twisted sideways as the hunter twisted. And the bear held the knife clasped firm beneath his armpit. Thorkell was trapped!

So long the two held this lock that a child said, “Mother, the men are silly with the new sun. I want my milk, Mother! Milk, Mother!”

Then Thorkell let his knife fall on to the pebbled shore of the fjord. He straightened up and smiled. Björn straightened up and smiled too. Then Björn stooped and picked up Thorkell’s knife and gave it back to him.

“Here are my thumbs,” he said.

Thorkell said, “Wolf, you are a fool. You should go back to the Caledonians and say that you are a fool. Björn is a sensible man. He has bear’s blood in him, like all proper Northmen. Björn will tell you why the oarholes are not round.”

Björn said, “Master Thorkell, saving your presence, Wolf is a fairly sensible man for a Pict, but he is hasty. That is all. The oarholes are not round because my lad here has sense. In truth, he has never sailed farther across the water than this fjord, but he has sense. This is his idea. ‘When you have the sail up,’ says he, ‘you do not need the oars, Master.’ I spoke him fair and agreed with him. ‘All right,’ says he. ‘When you pull in the oar, what have you left?’ ‘A hole,’ says I. ‘Right,’ says he, ‘then make your hole flat and straight, so that an oar can come into the ship by it, allowing for the blade. Then make a little shutter over the flat hole, and you have got rid of the fear of water!’ All this said the boy, and like a fool I followed him, for the idea seemed a good one to me. And I put little shutters, as he had said, over the oarholes, so that the ship would be safe from the waves.”

Björn moved across to the long ship and pointed to the securely bolted pieces of wood.

Thorkell watched him. Then he turned his pale blue eyes upon Wolf, slowly, steadily, with a sidelong motion of the head. And the smile on his lips was not pleasant to see. The old man in the shadows lowered his war-torn face and said, “Aiee, Aiee, Wolf should not speak so fast!”

Thorkell said, “Wolf, come you here, you dolt of dolts.”

Wolf shambled back from the long ship as readily as he had gone to it, a smile on his thin red face, his thin red hand still scratching under his leather jerkin.

“Kneel before the shipmaster and beg his pardon,” said Thorkell, looking down at him.

The villagers stared as the thin man knelt.

“Not with his knife,” said Wolf, pleasantly. “I would prefer yours, Thorkell. Every man can make a mistake, but that is no reason why he should suffer more than a twelve-month.”

Björn said, “Must he take my punishment, Thorkell?”

Thorkell said, “Who talks of punishment among a free folk such as this? A man may have a joke, may he not, without spoiling the hand of a good tradesman?”

Wolf looked down at his red scarred hands. “What trade can these follow, Thorkell?” he said, smiling quietly.

Thorkell kicked him gently in the side and rolled him over on to the pebbles. Then Wolf rose, rubbing his long finger below his nose, with a comical expression on his face, and Thorkell put his arm about his shoulders.

“Come, side-man,” he said, “let us drink a horn of mead in this place and think about a name for the ship.” Then as an afterthought, he said, “Come you, shipmaster, and let us drink together, for you seem a sharp fellow.”

Björn said, “Not I, Thorkell, but my apprentice.”

“Bring him, too,” said Thorkell. “A lad who has thoughts about oarholes like that should make a viking one day.”